Musical Structure, Musical Nation, C. 1800–1950

Musical Structure, Musical Nation, c. 1800–1950

While the Qajar Dynasty would eventually reunite most Safavid territory under their control by the very end of the eighteenth century, the first writings about Qajar music apparently come somewhat later, in the mid-nineteenth century. And even the earliest of these writings document new concepts of musical structure that would ultimately underpin the emergence of the radif-dastgah tradition. Early writings about music associated with the Qajar court describe idiosyncratic models of procedural musical structure. They alternately referred to twelve dastgah or four shadd, which might also be called dastgah. But in both cases writings described a unique, separate procedure of musical development that defined each shadd or dastgah.1 There was not one shared superstructure unifying the organization of all dastgah: each one required a separate explanation of how it worked, from the beginning of a performance to the very end. While authors initially described varying numbers and terminology for these performance-based structures, seven dastgah eventually become a common framework for this procedural concept of musical structure. Descriptions of seven dastgah suggest the musical procedures of each dastgah could relate specifically to how instruments were played. Following this logic, a text dated 1912 from an observer named Mirza Shafi Khan described the melodic progression of seven different dastgah in terms of different tunings for strings and changing hand positions over the duration of a performance. This referred to how the music could be played on the tar (tār), a specific long-necked, fretted lute.2 However many dastgah there were in the early to mid-nineteenth century, musicians took the seven dastgah of the late nineteenth century and made changes to this particular tradition in the twentieth century. It is the seven dastgah of the

105 106 chapter 6 late Qajar court and their transformation in the twentieth century that define the radif-dastgah tradition as musicologists understand it today. Even musicians with the most direct connections to the earliest practitioners of the seven dastgah in the nineteenth century were engaged in a music tradition steeped in modern musical change. The centerpiece of the radif-dastgah tradition as musicians and scholars dis- cuss it today is the radif: a specific collection of monophonic melodic material that provides the structure for the tradition’s theory, pedagogy, and performance practice. The melodic material of the radif ranges from short motivic fragments to melodies with longer multisectional development, yet all of these different musical pieces and motives have come to be referred to individually as gusheh. The modern radif and current Iranian music theory subdivides the gusheh of the radif into twelve or thirteen subdivisions: subsets of gusheh that are thought to have modal affinity with one another. The primary term for these subsets of gusheh is dastgah, though smaller subsets of gusheh may be referred to as dastgah or avaz. Seven dastgah comprised the original designated structures of the tradition, with smaller avaz-dastgah being designated somewhat later in the twentieth century. Currently musicians vary in their distinction between the original seven and the additional four to five avaz-dastgah. Some treat the original seven dastgah as primary and the avaz-dastgah as secondary and this is often where the question of how many avaz-dastgah exist depends on the particular radif or performer. Others make no distinction between the original seven and the additional, smaller avaz subdivisions, typically referring to all of them equally as twelve dastgah. The relationship between the gusheh and the dastgah is complex and different musicians and music scholars have described it in different ways. In keeping with the basic premise of the twelve maqam, one common approach to analysis used by musicians is to position each dastgah as an abstract modal framework or scale, and to describe the gusheh associated with each dastgah as being an individual melodic manifestation of a specific dastgah’s modality or scale. Within this analysis, each of the seven dastgah and four to five avaz-dastgah represent distinct modal frameworks and each gusheh consists of small musical ideas and larger compositions that express features of the modal framework to which it is assigned. There is some disagreement, however, on how to represent exactly the essential parameters for these distinct modal frameworks. For example, figures 8 and 9 show two different possibilities, one documented by the ethnomusicologist Jean During according to the teachings of Nur ‛Ali Borumand (1906–1976) and the other documented by the ethnomusicologist Lloyd Miller according to the teachings of Dariush Safvat (1928–2013).3 Each scholar’s analysis shows how two different masters of the tradition described slightly different ideas about what constituted the essential features for modal frameworks in the tradition. The names of the original seven dastgah Figure 8. Modal interpretation of the dastgah by Jean During based on the radif of Nur ʿAli Borumand are Shur (shūr), Mahur (māhūr), Homayun (homāyūn), Chahargah (chahārgāh), Segah (segāh), Nava (navā), and Rast-Panjgah (rāst-panjgāh). Of the avaz-dastgah, Bayat-i Isfahan (bayāt-i iṣfahān) is derived from a set of gusheh that originally belonged within the dastgah of Homayun. Dashti (dashtī), Abu ‛Ata (abū ‛aṭā’), Bayat-i Tork (bayāt-i tork), and Afshari (afshārī) are based on distinct sections of gusheh taken from the dastgah of Shur. One additional avaz, Bayat-i Kord (bayāt-i kord) may be added to the avaz of Shur, or simply counted as a section of Shur. Figure 9. Modal interpretation of the dastgah by Lloyd Miller based on the teachings of Dariush Safvat

The complexities of defining distinct modalities for the dastgah and avaz-dastgah extend from the gusheh themselves, which have varying amounts of commit- ment to a single, shared modal framework when organized within their constituent dastgah. The later designation of the avaz-dastgah extended in part from melodic sections of the original seven dastgah having a degree of modal independence from their source dastgah. The discrepancy in the number of avaz-dastgah extends from disagreements about whether or not four or five distinct modal frameworks can be extracted from the dastgah of Shur. Musical Structure, Musical Nation 109

Figure 10. Examples of gusheh that exhibit modal independence according to Jean During

While the numbers of notes in each modality vary in During’s interpretation of Borumand, Miller and Safvat represent all dastgah and avaz as existing within a set octave framework. Additionally, these models of modality in the system disagree on how to define the tonic ( ) of Shur, Abu ‛Ata, Dashti, Homa- yun, and Segah. These two interpretations also represent Homayun’s relationship with Isfahan differently, with During’s analysis reflecting different modal parameters for each one, and Miller maintaining they still share the same essential modal framework. Though there is variation in how musicians and scholars interpret modality in the radif-dastgah tradition, the growing definition and independence of the avaz-dastgah in the twentieth century did facilitate more consistency in utilizing distinct modalities in performance. Even with this adjustment, however, there were still individual gusheh that maintained strong modal independence from the seven larger dastgah in which they appear (see figure 10). While some dastgah contain more modally independent gusheh than others, musicians and scholars consider modulation an inherent part of each dastgah. Shur notably contains less modulation than the rest of the dastgah.4 This is likely because large sections of Shur were converted into avaz-dastgah, thus removing large sections of Shur that would have constituted multiple significant modulations. Despite the modal diversity in the gusheh, teaching and understanding the dastgah and avaz-dastgah as overarching modalities that provide the dominant modal definition in the system are quite common. Conversely, a framework of performance that emphasizes the more complex procedural aspects of the original seven dastgah remains at the core of musicians’ conceptions of the fully authentic Iranian music tradition. Thus, traditional Iranian music in its most authentic manifestations of the late twentieth century still emphasized the melodic idiosyn- 110 chapter 6 crasy of the individual dastgah. If a musician or a group of musicians with a singer wanted to perform traditional Iranian music in its most authentic form, it would be the radif-dastgah tradition following a detailed procedural model: they would take one particular dastgah and perform the gusheh of it in a fairly set order, with varying degrees of improvisation on the different types of gusheh. This continued emulation of the radif-dastgah tradition’s earliest manifestations has maintained an emphasis on each dastgah’s idiosyncratic use of pitch in the course of ongoing melodic development even as notions of systematic modality have become a stan- dard part of the tradition. Within the modal diversity of the gusheh, musicians and scholars locate dastgah modality primarily in the gusheh that comprise the first section of a dastgah performance, referred to as the introduction or daramad (darāmad). The dastgah and avaz-dastgah all have a certain number of gusheh that are performed/ improvised upon first in a performance for the daramad. Most gusheh of the daramad are simply called daramad and then numbered to indicate their order in performance (first daramad, second daramad, and so on). Other gusheh may be considered part of the daramad and the gusheh called Kereshmeh (kereshmeh) is one of the most common gusheh to be included as part of this introductory section. While some are improvised upon more than others what the gusheh of the daramad have in common is their use of a specific, consistent modal range. As the performance continues, gusheh will move away from this range, both in terms of moving higher in range and in terms of modulation. Reiteration of the initial daramad modality at certain intervals knits together the ever-changing pitch usage of individual gusheh. Short codified phrases called forud (forūd) provide restatements of the opening modal range as the performance proceeds. Thus, the modal range of the daramad does provide a consistent modal touchstone throughout the performance.

THE RADIF AS A MUSICAL WHOLE Another way of analyzing the system that ethnomusicologists have favored is to focus on the radif as a whole. When scholars have compared gusheh across the system of dastgah and avaz-dastgah they have found a variety of interrela- tionships between the gusheh.5 For instance, many gusheh actually exist in more than one dastgah with only small amounts of modal transposition or rhythmic variation, such as kereshmeh in the daramad.6 On another level, all of the dastgah tend to share gusheh that perform a certain function or behave in a certain way. For instance, highly rhythmic gusheh often appear in performance without much alteration, while gusheh with less metered construction are more likely to be improvised upon. Some gusheh are considered central to any performance of a specific dastgah, while others are considered less central and performers have the Musical Structure, Musical Nation 111 option of including them in their proper place within the dastgah or excluding them altogether. A majority of gusheh in the radif derive from three concepts that define three possible melodic sections. One central concept is the idea of singing poetry using only its poetic foot as the rhythmic basis of its melody (she‛r). Another is the concept of tahrir (taḥrīr), with is a specific style of vocal improvisation without any words. Additionally, the concept of forud is often folded in with poetry and tahrir. A gusheh may use different combinations of tahrir and poetry, with the forud appearing at the end as a cadential figure. Conversely, forud can also be classified as independent gusheh in and of themselves, as can a single phrase of poetry or tahrir. Using these different types of melodic sections in different combinations can give gusheh a variety of melodic forms throughout the radif, but only a small number of gusheh do not employ them at all. The gusheh that fit this pattern are stylistically vocal, since they take a majority of their organization from poetry and ideas surrounding vocal performance. The emphasis on poetic meter over and above musical meter in many gusheh is key to the overall performance aesthetic. Poetic meter provides most of the rhythmic organization of this type of gusheh, which embodies an approach to rhythm that is ostensibly unmetered in a musical sense, meaning a drum does not accompany the melodies of these gusheh. Their loose, poetry-driven rhythmic structures also relate to using relatively small ensembles. They favor using one main soloist at any given moment in a performance, who makes choices about improvisation that a few additional instruments are able to follow and imitate.7 Most of the gusheh that are not derived from poetry, tahrir, or forud belong to a separate category of gusheh that utilizes two different metered forms intended for performance by instruments only: the reng (reng), which is a group instrumental piece in a moderate 6/8-style rhythm, and the chahar mezrab (chahār meżrāb), a virtuosic solo instrumental piece usually played in a fast 2/4. In contrast to the stylistically vocal gusheh, these two forms employ a distinct, steady melodic pulse often punctuated by a drum. In the course of performing a particular dastgah or avaz-dastgah, instruments play all types of gusheh, regardless of their stylistic ori- entations toward vocal or instrumental characteristics. By contrast, if a vocalist is present he or she would only participate in performing stylistically vocal gusheh and not the instrumental gusheh.

Though an analysis of the radif as a whole reveals much structural consistency, modal logic is still often taken by musicians and music scholars as a founda- tion of the system. Indeed, scholars classify gusheh that do not conform to the modal parameters of their given dastgah as modulatory figures, thus giving their noncompliance with the modal parameters of the dastgah a modal function in the course of performance.8 Yet tension remains between the specificity and 112 chapter 6 idiosyncrasy of melodic material within the seven dastgah and the framework of abstract modality that many musicians and scholars like to use to describe the dastgah. The development of more composition within the radif-dastgah tradition facilitated greater exploration and development of dastgah modality. The reng and the chahar mezrab became models for composition, focusing notions of composition on instrumental forms. A new instrumental form also appeared in the course of dastgah performance called pish-daramad (pīshdarāmad). Though the pish-daramad is listed in the earliest available charts of the gusheh, musicians of the twentieth century regarded it as a separate phenomenon that was added later, distinct from the other instrumental gusheh. Like the reng and chahar mezrab, the pish-daramad has both a specific rhythmic count and a specific place in the order of performance. It was played by all instruments in the performance in a moderate 2/4. It was designed to precede the daramad as a kind of overture, thus the name pish-daramad (before-daramad). The expanding application of composition within a largely improvisational performance practice allowed greater exploration of the concept of dastgah modality, as musicians made decisions about the modal parameters they would use to compose a piece that was not defined by any particular sequencing of gusheh or poetic structure. In addition to the instrumental compositions, the insertion of metered songs (taṣnīf) into larger dastgah performances gave musicians and poets alike an opportunity to create contemporary compositions. While the vocal gusheh consistently used classical Persian poetry, tasnif could use newly composed melody and text. The tasnif would ultimately become the largest realm of composition. Its place- ment in the performance of a dastgah presented an opening for changes to performance structure. Tasnif provided moments of metered singing in the middle of a dastgah performance, in the midst of long sections of vocal improvisation. Any and all instruments could also perform tasnif in full heterophony with the voice, as meter allowed for full melodic coordination of an instrumental ensemble with the singer. In the procedure-focused performance model of the radif-dastgah tradition, a musician or group of musicians would choose a dastgah or avaz-dastgah, and then use the gusheh of that dastgah or avaz-dastgah to give a performance that was typically divided between portions that were improvisation upon the vocal- style gusheh and portions that consisted of verbatim reiteration of compositions and instrumental forms of gusheh. There are many potential ways of executing a performance within this format, but the instrumental musically metered sections would typically mark moments of transition: the beginning of the performance, the end, and transitions between the longer, unmetered improvised sections in the middle of a performance. The customary long-form performance common in the early to mid-twentieth century often began with a pish-daramad. After the pish-daramad, the daramad Musical Structure, Musical Nation 113 introduced improvisation on gusheh that highlighted the basic modality of the dastgah. The daramad was punctuated toward the end by the rhythmic chahar mezrab. As the performance went on after the daramad, additional sections of improvisation on new sets of vocal-style gusheh moved further and further away from the initial modality of the dastgah while also moving higher and higher in terms of register. Forud figures appeared at various points, reiterating the original pitch set emphasized in the daramad. A tasnif composition demarcated the end of an improvisatory section. As tasnif compositions grew in number and popularity, multiple sections of improvisation could be delineated by tasnif, not just forud. Performing the reng marked the end of the entire performance of a dastgah. The term avaz came to refer to the long sections of improvisation on the vocal- style gusheh, and these sections were initially the essential core of performance. The dastgah served as a predetermined plan of which melodic materials would be used and in what order, but the concept of avaz governed the actual improvisational performance. Avaz was the procedural execution of the plan outlined for a dastgah in practice. The radif of Persian music is the totality of the gusheh considered as a full repertoire across all dastgah and avaz-dastgah. There are different versions of the radif that are attributed to particular musicians who taught a particular version of the radif. There are also distinctions between the radifs associated with the voice and those associated with instruments, with instrumental radifs being larger than vocal radifs. Within all of this variation, there have also been attempts to establish the one true single Iranian radif.9 The contents of different radif reveal many similar gusheh that are likely to be seen in most radif, plus a certain number that are somewhat rarer and may only be present in one radif. In looking for the origins of the radif as a phenomenon, musicians and scholars agree that it goes back to a Qajar court musician named Mirza ‛Abdullah (1843– 1918), who probably performed using seven dastgah, each with its own distinct progression of melodies. His brother Mirza Husayn Qoli (1854–1916) was also a musician and had a collection of melodies organized into dastgah that was dis- tinctive from that of Mirza ‛Abdullah’s. Some musicians also mention one of their cousins, Gholam Husayn, as a major figure in the creation of the tradition, though no radif survives that is associated with his name.10 Both Mirza ‛Abdullah and Mirza Husayn Qoli played the tar (tār): a fretted, long-necked lute with an unusual double-bellied body that was covered with some kind of animal skin attached to a long neck. The tar appears to have always had three courses of strings. The tar had never been described in texts about the twelve- maqam system, yet it ultimately became an instrument shared between Persian speakers and Oghuz-Turkic speakers, and an important instrument in both Ira- nian and Azeri music traditions in the twentieth century. The tar also appears to have been the instrument of Mirza ‛Abdullah and Husayn Qoli’s father, Farahani (d. 1821), who was a much-praised court musician in his own right. 114 chapter 6

While this instrument is still a central instrument in the tradition today, there were other instruments musicians specialized in playing for the Qajar court that had some record of previous use in the performance of court music and these instruments also became part of the radif-dastgah tradition. These included a trapezoidal hammer dulcimer called santur (santūr) a four-stringed spiked fiddle called kemancheh (kemāncheh), a type of reed flute called nay(nāy), and another fretted, long-necked lute called setar (setār). Similar to the tar, both the setar and the kemancheh appear to have originally had only three strings, with the fourth being added in the modern era. Additionally, the length of the neck on a setar and tar is nearly identical. They also both have the same moveable frets and similar tuning systems. While the former is played with a long-nailed finger and the latter with a plectrum, they are nevertheless very similar instruments. In this context the tar was never a completely novel instrument compared to the setar. The setar simply had a longer documented history. Beyond these instruments, vocalists were a very large component of the tradition from the very beginning. With poetry and the vocal improvisation of tahrir being key components of how most gusheh were ultimately constructed, the nature of vocal performance defined how performance took place. Musi- cians developed styles of playing for different instruments to imitate the vocal tahrir and the singing of poetry. Instrumentalists used this imitation either in call and response with the singing or in place of the singing if a vocalist was not present. Singers could also be drummers, accompanying rhythmic passages of a performance on a goblet-shaped drum (żarb) or a frame drum (daf). Beyond these indigenous instruments, the violin became a fairly important instrument in the tradition very early on, with some musicians preferring it to the indigenous spiked fiddle. In some cases, musicians in the tradition also played instruments with more standing in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire, including the qanun (qanūn) and the ‛ud (‛ūd). Overall, understanding music through the prism of long-form, highly specified musical procedure made the music of the radif-dastgah tradition quite distinct from the music of the twelve-maqam system. Even with a growing emphasis on abstract modality and composition during the twentieth century, the radif-dastgah tradition remained a practice of complex melodic idiosyncrasy associated with a particular long-form performance derived from musical improvisation upon poetry. While the twelve-maqam system distinguished between pitch modality, rhythmic cycles, and their paired application of composition, the radif-dastgah tradition did not initially have these distinct categories of musical action, nor can these distinct categories fully account for the fully formed, poetically metered melodic material of the radif. From the beginning, the seven dastgah were some- thing much more complex than seven distinct melodic modes. The concept of rhythmic cycle so central to music-making in the twelve- maqam system specifically had a reduced role in the radif-dastgah tradition, as Musical Structure, Musical Nation 115 vocal-style gusheh and the avaz used no percussion or musical rhythmic cycle. The addition of more compositions created more opportunities for abstract modality to be paired with rhythmic cycles in the twentieth century. Yet the categories of compositional forms were few and distinct when compared to those described in the twelve-maqam system. The ideas concerning the internal structure of composition from the twelve-maqam system no longer applied, and song types defined by the usage of poetry in languages other than Persian disappeared. Perhaps most notably, the radif-dastgah tradition initially relied upon and eventually acknowledged notions of musical improvisation distinct from composition. Discourse concerning musical improvisation—both what it was and how to do it—became more explicitly central to the definition of the radif-dastgah tradition’s authentic style of performance practice as the twentieth century progressed.11 Conversely, it had no specific meaning as a musical concept and little acknowledged structural significance in twelve-maqam-system performance. In relation to improvisation, the importance of the avaz in radif-dastgah performance prominently distinguished music-making of the modern tradition from that of the twelve-maqam system. Both before and after the additional modal structures were extracted from the original seven dastgah, the term avaz referred to long sections of music-making based on a procedural working out of both melodic and poetic material. A closer look at the gusheh used in the avaz shows that many gusheh contain one couplet of a single poem, perhaps two, and that the progression of gusheh together often narrates large portions of single poem, with smaller sections of separate poems punctuating this single narration at certain points in the melodic progression.12 So it is a specific application of poetry—often explicitly sung, but always underpinning the melodic organization of the gusheh in the avaz—that provides the procedural basis to extrapolate upon melodic material in a section of avaz. This approach to music-making is different than a suite organization, such as the nawbat murattab from the time of Maraghi, or similar organizations common in the Arabic- and Turkish-speaking areas to the west of Iran, such as the waṣla of the Mashreq or the nawbah of the Maghreb. These other performance models string together metered composition into contemporary suites, and modern traditions use unmetered improvisation to connect the distinct compositions. Each composition is a piece or song unto itself created in a specific mode that musicians can then place into the suite organization, depending on which mode musicians decide to use for any given suite in any given performance. Conversely, the avaz at the core of a dastgah or avaz-dastgah performance has shorter melodic sections (gusheh) that must fall within a melodic progression that is set by poetry. The gusheh themselves are not independent compositions and their relationship with modal consistency is much more complicated because musical progression is largely dependent on poetic progression. In a very real way, poetry sets the musical organization of avaz, rather than music organizing the 116 chapter 6 poetry. Metaphorically they are like pieces of a dastgah music puzzle: small, highly interconnected though individually distinct, holding a fixed position that only makes sense in the proper context of a large musical whole. With poetry recitation determining many parameters of the musical whole, the role of metered composition is necessarily different and more limited. Its position is defined by how it best frames the poetic progression of the avaz. The radif-dastgah tradition is surrounded by similar models of performance, where poetry recitation determines a long-form musical structure organized around procedures that emphasize delivery of the poetry. Of these related traditions, Azeri Mugham is the closest to the radif-dastgah tradition in terms of both structure and historical proximity. Yet similarities can be seen in music traditions stretching from Baghdad all the way to Bukhara. The basic premise of the radif- dastgah tradition derived from larger transregional trends in musical performance that were in place in the eighteenth century. But the unique aspects of the Iranian system would be shaped by the particular music practices in the Qajar court in Tehran, the development of the nation of Iran itself, and the place of music within an Iranian national identity.13

THE RISE OF THE QAJARS AND THE NATION-STATE The Turkic tribes from which the Qajars came had been part of the militant Shi‛a Qizilbash, who had supported the Safavids from the beginning of their rule. At the time of the Safavid’s fall, they were located in and around the southeast coast of the Caspian Sea. They vied for dynastic control over former Safavid lands, but they were not able to take control of a significant portion of these lands until nearly a century after the Safavids fell from power. The world the Qajars came to rule in at the cusp of the nineteenth century, however, had already changed in significant ways since the fall of the Safavids. The Qajars would not be able to sustain an empire of extracting resources from land and subjects for long. The Ottomans and Mughals were already embroiled in attempts to negotiate their imperial power with the demands of modernity and the Qajars had to quickly adjust to the same modern circumstances their neighbors were confronting. The devastating circumstances of the Afghan invasion in 1722 created a significant interruption in what continuity had existed for musicians moving from court to court, maintaining a similar conception of music over centuries as dynastic patrons rose and fell. The gap in consistent patronage created by the invasion meant that the Qajars did not come to power and immediately acquire Safavid musicians, nor is it clear that they acquired whatever musicians the smaller Afsharid or Zand Dynasties may have had in their service. They initially kept court close to their home territory in the city of Tabriz, but ultimately chose Tehran as their imperial capital, a place that had not been a major dynastic capital in the past. In attempting Musical Structure, Musical Nation 117 to build a new capital for their kingdom in a location with little dynastic history, the Qajars did not have the benefit of building off of significant institutions established by dynastic predecessors. They made music an aspect of their dynastic life, using the same venues of dynastic musical performance the Safavid’s had. They had music in their court, as well as military music and Shi’a rituals performed in public that also used music. But the types of music used in these venues were not necessarily the same music the Safavids had used. Specifically, they did not seem to have anyone associated with music in their court that had a direct connection to the twelve-maqam system or the specific literate culture that had surrounded it. The radif-dastgah tradition thus emerged out of a unique fissure between Safavid and Qajar court culture. The loss of continuity meant that music had a unique opportunity to change in the courts of the Qajar Dynasty, even as the nineteenth century required musical change in relation to new structural changes of the modern sociopolitical landscape. In the particular moment the Qajars came to power, a transition that the historian Marshall Hodgson calls “the great transmutation” was well on its way in the Middle East.14 The two primary global changes that affected this transmutation into modernity were the rise of a global economic system based on the trade of commodities coupled with the rise of the nation-state system. Added to this were many technological innovations that aided both of these systems while also changing the parameters of military interaction. Pressure on the Qajars to participate in the global economic system came from the center of global trade: Europe. Qajar lands specifically stood between landlocked Russia, the Indian Ocean, and the many valuable commodities Great Britain controlled in South Asia. In the name of their competing economic interests, Britain and Russia brought many modern technologies and institutions to Qajar lands, including a telegraph system and banking system as well as modern military technology, organization, and training. Among the extensive foreign investment in the Qajar military was the first modern school built in the region, a military school called the Dar al-Fonun (Dār al-Fonūn), staffed with European instructors. All of this foreign investment in modern infrastructure facilitated more trade in commodities within and across Qajar territory, with Britain and Russia specifically competing to monopolize on the benefits of Qajar economic development. The Qajars accepted these innovations and this extreme foreign intervention as part of their need to defensively modernize their empire. They also sought to make short-term economic gains by selling off control of their natural resources and institutions to European powers. The most notorious of these concessions was the D’Arcy Oil Concession of 1901, which gave over most of the profits from oil extraction in Qajar lands to a British company, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. The extreme amount of control exerted by Russia and Great Britain on the Qajars shaped the ever-hardening borders of their realm. The Qajars lost significant por- Map 8. Iran, Qajar Dynasty Territorial Legacy: from the Atlas of the Islamic World and Its Vicinity (web page) by Dr. Michael Izady. This infograph documents how the borders of modern Iran developed out of the many battles, treaties, and other negotiations of the Qajars with other competing powers in the region.

120 chapter 6 tions of their northern lands to Russia, while Great Britain inhibited their control of lands in the southeast, maintaining a geographic buffer between Qajar territory and their colonial activity in South Asia. The Qajars fought to keep and even gain territory, but in this context of global superpowers they were functionally very weak. The Qajars lost land to both foreign players and their neighbors. Russia and Great British specifically resolved their so-called Great Game over Qajar lands in 1907. They agreed that Russia could control the north of Qajar lands and Britain could control the south, all without any specific consent of the Qajars themselves (see map 8). This level of foreign interference would remain an issue for Iran throughout most of the twentieth century. Nationalism and the rise of Iran alongside other nations of Central Asia occurred both with and against the conflicting interests of other nations. The Qajars needed the structures of the nation-state to participate in the rising global economic system, to which they had to adapt as a basic means of economic survival. Notions of a world divided into nations and races as well as political concepts of democracy and the rule of law entered Qajar territory via European education. Yet nationalism also served as discourse against foreign interests and in favor of citizenship over subjecthood. The rise of global economic activity had direct impacts on the Qajars’ former subjects, some of whom recognized the nation as a means of securing their power in the modern world. As the Qajars’ attempted to exert larger degree of control over their subjects to secure the nation-state, subjects becoming citizens pushed back against any notion of supreme dynastic control. The first people to recognize their citizenship within the Qajar Realm belonged to new classes of people created by the global trade in commodities. These new classes included a new class of independent landowners, a merchant class that traveled to and from Europe to trade commodities, a large worker class that created commodities, and a growing class of educated elites who had access to modern educational institutions both in Iran and in Europe. At times these new classes had enough power to assert their interests against Qajar interests. Their access to modern education and technologies also gave them a means to imagine the nation: the differences between different peoples, the ability of millions of people to share a single identity, and the possibility of a single shared language and culture. By the early twentieth century, the Qajar Empire largely operated as a nation- state rather than an empire. The push for nationalization coming from the nation’s newly realized citizens culminated in the Constitutional Revolution in 1905, which was the first formal call to end dynastic rule in favor of a republic that represented the broader nation. Though this revolution did not achieve its stated goals, it did seat a parliament (majles) and formally adopt more of the trappings of a republic. With the failure of constitutionalism and the onset of World War I, several other competing conceptions of the nation came to the fore. Though the conception of Iran as a nation took hold under the Qajars, large non-Persian-language groups Musical Structure, Musical Nation 121 like Kurds and Azeris had their own ambitions for nationhood, as did various Qajar provinces, including Khuzastan and Gilan. With these many different competing concepts of nation manifesting as upheaval and revolt, the nation of Iran was not assured a place on the map until its existence became fully enforced under the military rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi beginning in 1925.

THE FULL NATIONALIZATION OF IRAN: THE RISE OF REZA SHAH Reza Shah, like many leaders in the Middle East in the early twentieth century, was very inspired by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s nationalization of Turkey. Com- ing out of the Russian-run Cossack Brigade of the Qajar military as Reza Khan, he was a relatively unknown military officer when he participated in a coup to formally overthrow the Qajars. In his push to become the autocratic ruler of Iran, he used the Cossack Brigade to put down nationalist insurrections that threatened notions of Iranian sovereignty, and set out to create a larger, more systematic national government bureaucracy for Iran. Not wanting to present himself as a copy of Ataturk, Reza Khan changed his name to Reza Shah and kept the imagery of dynastic governance, declaring himself Reza Shah Pahlavi of the newly created Pahlavi Dynasty. He borrowed the Pahlavi name from the pre-Sassanian Empire, of which ruins and artifacts had recently been excavated by European archeolo- gists. This move signaled the direction of his government’s nationalist conception of the Iranian nation. Iran became a fully recognized nation-state with an identity tied to pre-Islamic Empire that could validate secular autocratic rule, first under Reza Shah and then under his son, Mohammad Reza. Reza Shah’s autocratic rule initially reduced the influence of Islamic leaders, as power over society became concentrated in the hands of the state. In discourse there was a connection between reducing the influence of Islam and the popularity of the Aryan hypothesis. Between World War I and World War II the Aryan hypothesis had a great impact on discourses surrounding Iranian national identity. Reza Shah emphasized Aryan superiority by insisting on naming the nation Iran and not Persia, which had been its label on many maps made in Europe. Choosing a name that could be translated as “land of the Aryans” played on Europe’s own modern racial- ized view of the world, placing Iran in a strong racial category vis-à-vis notions of Indo-Europeans’ Aryan superiority and Semitic peoples’ inferiority. Reza Shah tried to curb the strong intervention of Russia and Great Britain. He asked other countries, including the United States and Germany, for various types of foreign assistance, which increased the number of countries involved in Iran and diluted some Russian and British control. In emulation of Ataturk’s policies in Turkey, Reza Shah worked to centralize control over the country by expanding and improving the army as well as increasing the size of government bureaucracy. He nationalized numerous industries, thus ensuring state monopoly control over 122 chapter 6 such things as the mining of natural resources and factory production. By the late 1930s, the Iranian government controlled sugar refineries, spinning mills, weav- ing mills, food-processing factories, vegetable oil plants, grain mills, and tobacco farming.15 The one industry the government did not control was the petroleum industry, which remained a concession to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which changed its name to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in keeping with the official name of the nation. The Iranian government also invested in improving the country’s modern infrastructure. Reza Shah initiated the building of power plants to increase the population’s access to electricity and electric light. He also sought to improve existing roads and build new roads in addition to nationalizing and expanding the railroad system. Reza Shah also pursued government-sponsored public education and dis- semination of information throughout the country. Persian-language education increased substantially as access to public education grew. After the Dar al-Fonun, Reza Shah inaugurated the first modern university, the University of Tehran, in 1935. He also established the region’s first radio station, Radio Iran, which gave the nation access to a single shared source of information, which members of the nation consumed simultaneously. Reza Shah’s reforms came at a heavy price for Iranian citizens. Because most industries were run as government monopolies, Reza Shah’s reforms enriched the government often at the expense of the population, who did not necessarily experience significant economic benefits even as they did experience a consistently heavy tax burden. Poverty became a national issue as wealth became concentrated among an ever-shrinking number of government elites. Political dissent was consistently stifled, with Reza Shah imposing strict censorship on political speech and removed anyone in government whom he suspected of opposing his plans. He used the army to continue to suppress independence movements, prevent local uprisings and settle some nomadic peoples. The amount of direct control the national government asserted on the population was extreme compared to the amount asserted during dynastic rule a century earlier. In 1929, Reza Shah famously began controlling what the population wore, decreeing that men had to abandon all customary regional dress, including religious clothing, and wear European attire. This decree was extended to women in 1936, when headscarves and veils also became illegal. For all of his attempts to quell British and Russian interference, Reza Shah was forced to step down during World War II when both British and Russian forces invaded in order to secure oil lines for Allied Forces. Reza Shah was replaced by his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Mohammad Reza pushed for even more modernization, while discontent with the modernization among the population continued to fester. Foreign interference in national affairs in the name of protecting the economic control of oil remained a touchstone of citizen frustration. It formed the basis of resentment over the coup that unseated Prime Minister Mohammad Musical Structure, Musical Nation 123

Mosaddeq in 1953. It also played a role in the revolution against Mohammad Reza Pahlavi beginning in 1978. By the 1940s, Iran was a fully functional nation and had put down most other nationalist movements questioning its legitimacy. The conception of the Iranian nation derived from the historical unity of its newly defined ethnolinguistic Per- sian culture. While there were different ways to imagine the history of Persian culture, some version of this shared ethnolinguistic history was the legitimizing factor, whether the nationalist narrative was from the official government image of Iran or alternative narratives coming from the Persian-speaking population. Edu- cation proved key to the success of this nationalist narrative: creating and shar- ing a consistent narrative regarding Iran’s existence and historical legitimacy and spreading the use of the Persian language to create a more consistent, shared lin- guistic basis for the nation. In this context, music could become part of the shared knowledge and praxis of the nation, which demonstrated its historical validity in the modern world.

MUSIC AND MODERNITY: THE CHANGING PLACE OF MUSIC AND MUSICIANS IN MODERN IRAN The initial integration of Qajar domains into the global economic system and the global nation-state system directly affected the status of professional musicians performing within the system of patronage that served the ruling dynasty and its concomitant aristocracy. Though the radif-dastgah tradition initially emerged as a court-patronized music much like the twelve-maqam system, Qajar court musicians aligned very early on with contexts that no longer served dynastic interests, gradually adapting their work to new modern spaces both public and private. After the 1920s, dynastic patronage died out completely and these spaces became the new locations for musical education and performance. By the time Reza Shah came to power in 1925, musicians performing the radif-dastgah tradition were no longer court musicians at all: they were private citizens performing and teaching a national music tradition of Iran. By the mid-nineteenth century the Qajars had both indigenous and European forms of music in their control. The modernization of the Qajar military involved replacing all indigenous practices and organizing everything in imitation of how European militaries were organized, including European military music. Con- versely, performers of the radif-dastgah tradition initially consisted primarily of musicians of the inner and outer court, performing in closed settings or on out- ings as their patrons dictated, as musicians had done for centuries. The Qajars also maintained the ta‛zieh, a distinct genre of Shi‛a musical theater the Safavids had rit- ualized as part of their rule. Musicians from both the court and the military bands could appear together in Qajar ta‛zieh. The ta‛zieh singers specifically were often singers in the court and thus could be performers of the radif-dastgah tradition.16 124 chapter 6

The end of the nineteenth century changed the situation for musicians patronized by the Qajar court and aristocracy significantly, giving some of them historically unprecedented agency over their performance and movement in society. Initially, this agency stemmed from the large amount of interest of the aristocracy in playing the music themselves as amateur students and performers. As Qajar elites received modern education from European sources, music had a new role to play in proper intellectual and moral development of Iran’s growing intelligentsia. Music was no longer merely the work of servants or an occasional hobby for a prince: it was a source of education and enculturation for the Iranian nation. The association of the radif-dastgah tradition with the early development of an Ira- nian intelligentsia meant that many musicians of the tradition gained access to the new modern higher echelons of national existence, regardless of their own educational status. For instance, texts cite a Qajar court doctor, Mirza Mehdi-Khan Montazam al-Hokma, as a strong practitioner of the tradition who also taught it.17 Another Qajar minister who held multiple posts under multiple Qajar rul- ers, Mehdi Qoli Hedayat, also practiced and wrote about the tradition.18 These types of elite amateurs were at work alongside professionals like Mirza ‛Abdullah and Hoseyn Qoli, and this meant that the musicians in professional service to the Qajar court and aristocracy were sometimes able to gain access to some of Iran’s first institutions of modern education. In some cases court musicians who played in radif-dastgah tradition were able to attend the Dar al-Fonun, which had a music faculty. Evidence that musicians of the radif-dastgah tradition attended the Dar al-Fonun came from the French military musician Alfred Jean Baptiste Lemaire (1842–1907), who headed the music faculty there and made transcriptions of the radif, which he eventually published.19 In 1915, the music faculty at the Dar al- Fonun became a separate government music school (madreseh-i mūsīqī), which functioned as the first modern school of music in Iran. During the early twentieth century, musicians dependent on Qajar patronage who played in the radif-dastgah tradition and musicians from the Qajar military came together to form their own private secret society, the Society of Brotherhood (anjuman-i ūkhovat). The Society of Brotherhood was founded by Safi ‛Ali Zahir el-Dowleh. Though little is known about Zahir el-Dowleh himself, he was both a member of the Qajar aristocracy and member of the Safi Sufi Order. Sufi sama‛ practices had historically provided a consistent venue for music-making that had a religious identity apart from dynastic contexts and thus the Society of Brother- hood reinterpreted this legacy to create a civic organization dedicated to promot- ing musical performance beyond the reach of dynastic authority. In addition to conducting meetings and performances in private homes, the Society of Brother- hood also sponsored one of first public concerts independent of the court, which included the radif-dastgah tradition, at the cusp of the Constitutional Revolution. According to the Iranian musician and historian Ruhallah Khaleqi (1906–1965), the Society of Brotherhood provided this concert for free in the spirit of the Con- Musical Structure, Musical Nation 125 stitutional Revolution so that all people, including the poor, could have access to the music.20 Many people in Tehran were joining secretive civic groups, referred to as anjuman, during Qajar rule. Though they had different purposes, what they shared was a dedication to spreading new ideas and practices while maintaining some amount of secrecy. The secrecy surrounding anjuman related to their political nature, which threatened Qajar authority. Much secrecy was required for anjuman that promoted modern political ideas and movements, such as representa- tive democracy and constitutionalism The modicum of secrecy surrounding the Society of Brotherhood demonstrated the political nature of taking music performance away from the dynastic aristocracy and giving it to the modern intelligentsia, who could then give it to whomever they wished. Giving a large public audience access to Qajar court music and musicians was an act of charity that was also politically subversive. This movement of music from the court into the budding Iranian citizenry was not always a question of charity. It could be to the benefit of musicians, who in some cases could make a better living performing on the open market, playing for whoever would pay them. Khaleqi recounted a story about the radif-dastgah musician Darvish Khan (1872–1926) that conveys the political context of this move from court patronage to free agent. Darvish Khan discovered he was able to make his own money performing for people outside of the court rather than just playing for the Qajar prince, who was his patron. When the prince found out his musician was performing beyond his dynastic discretion, the prince threatened to cut off Dar- vish’s hands. Darvish Khan sought sanctuary in the British Embassy to avoid this punishment, and the embassy eventually won his safe release from Qajar service.21 Darvish Khan’s story demonstrates the impact of the global economic system on musicians, who were beginning to operate within this new economic model, with ever-lessening regard for the centuries of court patronage that had given them professional work. The development of new classes of people allowed music to be taken out of the court but changing parameters of the economy also pushed music into a broader marketplace. This push was met with some resistance by the Qajars, who still saw control over courtly musical performance as their dynastic right. The loss of that right, like so many others, could actually come in the context of foreign interference. The power of foreign governments to undermine Qajar authority—a pervasive problem in the Qajar’s political and economic matters— could even extend to musical matters. The move away from dynastic contexts was not only one of performance, but also one of education. As members of Iran’s modern intelligentsia took on amateur study of music as part of modern education, teaching music took on an important economic function for musicians who could count on the emerging elite to become their new patrons by becoming their students. In this way, teaching became another way that musicians could make a living beyond the court. This 126 chapter 6 culture of teaching further solidified the radif-dastgah tradition’s relationship with a broader Iranian society distinct from dynastic structures, while also positioning it within the earliest manifestations of modern educated classes. While acts of music performance outside of the court may or may not have intended to undermine Qajar power, there are examples of musicians operating in proximity to political opposition to dynastic authority. Letters from Baha’allah (Bahā’allah or Bahá’u’lláh) Mirza ‛Abdullah indicate that the musician’s work had meaning to the nineteenth-century millenarian movement known initially as Babism. Both Islamic authorities and the Qajars viewed Babism’s modern mes- sianic nature as a threat to the historical order of Islamic Empire, and the Qajars executed the first prophet of Babism, Sayyed ‛Ali-Moḥammad Shirazi, in 1850. This execution brought about a series of Babi uprisings against the Qajars, including an assassination attempt in 1853 against a major Qajar ruler and music patron, Nasir al-Din Shah. Baha’allah arouse as a new prophet in Babism who tried to quiet the animosity between Babis and the government, and ultimately became the founder of the Baha’i religion. Though it is unlikely that Mirza ‛Abdullah had the literacy to read letters from Baha’allah, they indicate an awareness of musicians in the radif-dastgah tradition among the Babi movement, which had its own origins in modernity and participated in the modern struggle for citizen autonomy against dynastic authority.22 In some cases, musicians directly attacked the Qajars as part of the growing political opposition to dynastic rule that culminated in the Constitutional Revolu- tion. A Qajar noble who was also a musician, Hassam al-Saltaneh, wrote a tasnif criticizing Mozzafar al-Din Shah for bringing famine and plague upon his subjects.23 The modern Persian poet ‛Aref Qazvini (1882–1934) also composed multiple tasnif criticizing the Qajars and praising the nation of Iran. This criticism of the Qajars was part of a larger public criticism of the Shah and call for constitutionalism, to which Mozzafar al-Din Shah (r. 1896–1907) eventually acqui- esced. When Mozzafar al-Din’s successor Muhammad ‛Ali (r. 1907–1909) would not honor the constitution and dismissed the parliament, the musician ‛Ali Naqi Vaziri (1887–1979) joined with fighters from Tabriz to depose Muhammad ‛Ali, and restore Parliament in 1909.24 Beyond the specific happenings on the ground in Qajar territory, musicians and students of the radif-dastgah tradition also took the unique step of travel- ing very long distances to and from Europe in order to give concerts and make modern recordings. Before World War I, bands that included musicians such as Darvish Khan and Mirza ‛Abdullah’s brother Husayn Qoli traveled to places that included Tbilisi, Paris, and London in order to perform live and have European recording companies produce recorded discs of these recordings for sale in the framework of global trade.25 That musicians in the radif-dastgah tradition were positioned in close proximity to historical events shaping modernity placed them among the privileged Musical Structure, Musical Nation 127 elites of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For all of the concern about making music accessible to the people at large, the radif-dastgah tradition had a unique, privileged standing in the growing sphere of modern music performance. Musicians who performed more broadly in urban spaces outside of the educated elite came to be derided as lower-class performers, referred to as motreb (moṭreb). Though motreb in premodern writings generally maintained a connotation rang- ing from positive to neutral when referring to any musician, in modern times its meaning shifted to denote a lower-class musician that lacked the education and higher class position of the radif-dastgah tradition and European musical traditions. Music had a certain value to the modern educated classes, yet this was part of the growing access to professional music performance throughout the population overall. As music became a commodity that could be bought and sold by anyone willing and able to pay for it, the radif-dastgah tradition had to operate in a field with multiple music genres all competing for the public’s attention. In this field the radif-dastgah tradition’s elite distinction related to both ideas concerning its Iranian authenticity and its place in educated society. While informal teaching circles existed early in the twentieth century, the first formal private school of the tradition opened in 1923. Print publication of educational materials started growing around the same time, with different musicians developing teaching texts so that educated Iranians could self-teach. These teaching manuals imitated European manuals, with sets of books to study the dastgah for beginner, intermediate, and advanced students. Consistent, public live performance took somewhat longer to develop. In 1924, the private salon called Klub Musical largely replaced the Society of Brotherhood as the premiere private organization of both traditional and military musicians. Elites also continued to spon- sor public performances for specific charitable causes at different public spaces around Tehran.26 Even with the rise of radio in the 1930s along with increasing opportunities for musicians to perform in live concert venues for public audi- ences, private performances remained an important venue for the tradition’s performance throughout the twentieth century. Under Reza Shah, new national institutions and bureaucracy created new spaces for elites to push their various musical agendas within the formal trappings of the Iranian nation. Though music education represented an essential part of modern progress even before Reza Shah, his bureaucracy directly established and controlled multiple institutions that formalized its place in educated Iranian society. Under Reza Shah, the Ministry of Education took an active interest in the music curriculum at public schools and later invested in improving the government music school and turning it into a full-scale conservatory (honaristān-i mūsīqī), which stood alongside a music faculty at the University of Tehran. Musi- cians worked within government ministries as well as in the new public schools, where music was part of a core curriculum children had to learn. Additionally, the rise of Radio Iran in the late 1930s provided even more employment and exposure 128 chapter 6 for musicians and music through government institutions. Radio benefited multiple types of music, including the music of the motreb and Western music. Musi- cians of the radif-dastgah tradition were not necessarily the primary beneficiaries of this first big step forward in mass media distribution, yet they were involved in radio early on, even as they cultivated stronger ties with modern institutions for music education and notions of elite amateurism.

CONCLUSION The radif-dastgah tradition emerged at the heart of the sudden and drastic transmutation of modern society in the nineteenth century. Its initial position at court and later position in the upper echelons of Iran’s modern urban landscape situated the practice and development of this music system at the heart of where modernity first emerged and developed in relation to the nation of Iran. Modernity created new public and private space as well as a new economic model and new types of social classes. The radif-dastgah tradition moved into and operated within the parameters of these major social, political, and economic transmutations. These changes did not take hold everywhere in the Middle East at the same time. Initially, large portions of what became modern Iran were not experienc- ing the impacts of modern education or modern technology the way Tehran and other urban centers did. Many areas of Iran struggled to integrate into the global economy, even as the discovery of oil turned Iran into a de facto rentier state on the outermost edges of the economic system. Grand nationalization and modernization initiatives from both Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza Shah did not result in a uniform experience of modernity throughout the nation. But they did put a Pahalvian vision of Iran on the map and undermine any other nationalization efforts that questioned the legitimacy and the integrity of the Iranian nation. This meant that, while urban elites could consistently imagine a uniformly Per- sian nation of Iran at the turn of the century, this Iranian national imagination was still in its early stages even by the 1920s. The movement of musicians who performed the radif-dastgah tradition from Qajar control into the modern educated elite positioned them to both experience and participate in the modernization process in its earliest manifestations. This early access related to their original place within the dynastic court and proximity to the dynastic aristocracy, where musicians related to government structures that were the focus of the first push for modernization. Courtiers took an interest in the tradition and courtiers were also some of the first to turn into and interface with the modern intelligentsia, even as they moved from being courtiers to operating in the national sphere. In this context, the radif-dastgah tradition came out of a unique moment in history. Political and military contingencies of the eighteenth century interrupted the continuity of past court music traditions, opening up space for new traditions during the earliest phases of Iranian nationalization. The radif-dastgah tradition Musical Structure, Musical Nation 129 presented unique musical opportunities to adapt to a new temporal space, as music now needed to relate to modern identities and experiences well beyond the parameters of the court. The foundations of the twelve-maqam system would no longer have the same meaning in this modern context, even as the idiosyncrasies of the radif-dastgah tradition came to define a unique Iranian identity in the modern world. Conversely, the twelve-maqam system itself would ultimately return to serve as a conceptual point of national interpretation and reinterpretation for the radif-dastgah tradition. As Iranians sought to locate their national music history and trace the national origins of the radif-dastgah tradition in Iranian history, the twelve-maqam system became a symbol of Iran’s glorious musical past. Discrepan- cies between the two methods of music-making became a source of change for the radif-dastgah tradition, which at first was tasked with verifying modern Iranian identity generally, while eventually needing to account for more detailed conceptions of Iranian history.